Slowly,slowly through the NRC labyrinth

NRC chairman Jaczko had requested the NRC commissioners fast track the Fukushima task forces safety recommendation in 90 days. However that isn’t likely as Thursday three of five commissioners announced their votes to go slowly.

It’s official: the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been outvoted on his proposal that the panel decide within 90 days on the recommendations it received from its Fukushima task force.
Rep.Ed Markey said the NRC had in essence directed the NRC staff “ to endlessly study the 90-day staff report before the commissioners consider the recommendations”

And the Nuclear Energy Institute wants to divide and conquer any new regulations

Marvin Fertel, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, told Wall Street analysts at a briefing Tuesday. In other areas, the recommendations of the task force call for "significant changes in the way NRC regulates," he said. Those issues should be considered separately, he said.

Full steam ahead and No Real Control

NEI does not expect the post-Fukushima recommendations to slow license renewals, power uprates or new plant approvals by NRC, Fertel said. Reactor design approvals, including for Westinghouse's AP1000 - the design being used at the two new US nuclear projects closest to completing NRC license reviews and beginning construction - are continuing to move forward, he said.

"It’s all designed to stay one step ahead of the rising floodwaters"

"It’s all designed to stay one step ahead of the rising floodwaters."

That reassuring statement made June 22nd is from the NRC public-blog .

Fast forward to June 27th

The inflatable berm that had been providing extra flood protection for the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant was punctured and deflated "due to onsite activities" early Sunday morning,Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) said in a statement.

The collapse of the berm allowed floodwaters to surround the main electrical transformers. Operators transferred power from offsite sources to the emergency diesel generators as a precautionary measure due to water leakage around the concrete berm surrounding the main transformers.

The NRC says no danger to the public, the plant is still being cooled and “The nuclear reactor was not affected by the flood waters said company and government officials.”
To the un-trained eye it kind of looks as if it was affected.

TRIHT'-ee-um

These two things I know are true; water flows down hill and Friday afternoon is when the health department and Vermont Yankee release troublesome news. This past Friday afternoon, reports from the Vt. Health Dept. leached slowly into the weekend news flow that two monitoring wells(one near a former drinking water well )showed elevated levels of radioactive tritium.

A Vermont Yankee spokesman saw this as good news because he claimed it showed the tritiated water was moving away from the area of the water well and toward the Connecticut River.

The state Health Department, reporting the test results late Friday afternoon, was less positive, calling them “of particular concern” because it meant tritium was again found in the area of a former drinking well. The detection of tritium in that well in October raised concerns because it was deeper than previous findings, suggesting that the radioactive isotope could be headed into aquifers that reach the public water supply.

In mid-November Vermont Yankee shut down it’s voluntary contaminated water extraction effort after shipping out, by truck to Tennessee 300,000 gallons of water for disposal processing. Monitoring will continue and an NRC report on the ground water extraction is due out sometime in January. The NRC held a non-public exit meeting[?] in November no findings where released

The NRC’s Sheehan said, however, that there were higher concentrations closer to the Connecticut River as the plume has moved, which was expected.

Check for more updates any Friday afternoon.

Vermont Yankee shutdown ,leak in 24”pipe

A 24” pipe in the feedwater system at the Vermont Yankee (VY) nuclear power plant in Vernon, VT is leaking and therefore the plant has commenced a shutdown. The NRC has been notified according to a press release from VY spokesperson Larry Smith.

At approximately 7:00 p.m. Sunday night plant operators identified leakage of approximately 60 drops per minute from a system pipe. Subsequent investigation by technicians and engineers identified the leak to be in the feedwater system piping. Because the leak is in a 24 inch piping section which cannot be repaired with the plant in operation, a conservative decision was made to take the plant out of service to perform a repair.

It’s a big pipe and it’s under pressure.
The difficult to access heavily insulated feedwater pipe carries radioactive water at about 300 degrees in temperature and is operated under 400 psi (pounds per square inch of pressure).
At 24” in diameter this pipe is roughly as big in diameter as the rescue tunnel used to rescue the trapped 33 Chilean miners. Plant reliability at this aging nuke are at issue here as the feedwater system is one of those systems the state legislature asked to be scrutinized by the public oversight panel in the Act 189 Reliability Assessment.

In Jan. 2009, an age related feedwater leak required a 50% power reduction.

Last week Entergy public ally addressed persistent rumors and disclosed that Vermont Yankee is up for sale and they are actively trying to find a buyer. Accumulating reliability issues could make the sale of the 30 plus year old plant difficult as it is clear faces accumulating series of hurdles.

Maggie Gundersen, president of Fairewinds Associates, Inc, notes that this is another significant reliability issue for the aging VY plant and emphasizes the need for its retirement, decommissioning, and dismantlement beginning in 2012.

New Vermont Nuke from Dept. of Half-baked Ideas

At the Vermont Senate vote on Yankee re-licensing newly appointed Senator Peg Flory proposed an amendment that called for supporting a new reactor be built on the Vermont Yankee site. I wonder if she realized that rate payers in many states are being asked to pay nuclear plant construction costs in advance.

The advertised nuclear power rebirth is facing more problems than those generated by Vermont Yankee’s ongoing tritium leak. Daunting start up construction costs scare private investors away. New plants can cost a quarter to one hundred percent of an entire utilities market capitalization.

Federal backed loans guarantees and local rate payers will be footing major portions of the bill if utilities have their way. In states with nuclear power projects, utilities have lobbied for the ability to charge rate payers while construction is in progress. Residents of Georgia, Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Missouri may all be required to cover the advance costs of new nuclear power construction.
The Washington Post reports

Financing has always been one of the biggest obstacles to a renaissance of nuclear power. The plants are expensive, and construction tends to run late and over budget. …
So utilities have turned to state legislators and regulators to help contain capital costs. In states such as Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, utilities have won permission to charge customers for some of the cost of new reactors while construction is still in progress -- a financing technique that would save utilities a couple of billion dollars for each reactor. Previously, utilities had to wait until power plants were in operation before raising rates, as they still do in most states.

Three Myths of Three Mile Island Accident

March 28 will mark the 30th anniversary of the accident at the Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pa. The TMI-2 accident had the greatest impact on nuclear regulation of any single event in history. Although there were no deaths or injuries, the accident is a reminder for the NRC and those who operate plants to remain vigilant in watching over the 104 operating reactors in the United States to ensure their safe operation.

These talks were recorded live at the Pennsylvania State Capitol on March 26, 2009.Video link here http://www.tmia.com/march26
Nuclear engineer and long-time industry executive, Arnie Gundersen gives a talk on his calculations of the amount of radiation released during the accident at Three Mile Island. Mr. Gundersen's calculations differ from those of the NRC's and official industry estimates.

About TMIA organization ........
Three Mile Island Alert is a non-profit citizens' organization dedicated to the promotion of safe-energy alternatives to nuclear power and is especially critical of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant.
Formed in 1977 (two years before the accident) TMIA is the largest and oldest nuclear watchdog group in central Pennsylvania.
Also at www.greenmountaindaily.com